Beha’alotcha 5786
Doing the Wave
This week we are reading Parashat Beha’alotcha (Numbers 8–12). You remember that in last week’s episode, the tribal leaders were bringing carts full of sacrificial offerings to dedicate the altar during 12 days of the opening ceremonies of the new tabernacle that the Israelites had erected in Exodus 40. Our parashah begins with Numbers 8, which starts with a paragraph instructing Aaron how to set up the lamps — which he does. Then we read the continuation of the ceremony inaugurating the Temple:
Num 8:5 The LORD spoke to Moses, saying: 6 Take the Levites from among the Israelites and cleanse them. [NJPS]
File v. 7 there under Grooming Hints for Levites, and v. 8 under the instructions to offer sacrifice. Then the Levites themselves are brought forward and, in sight of the entire community:
Num 8:11 Aharon is to elevate [וְהֵנִיף֩] the Levites as an elevation-offering [תְּנוּפָה֙], before the presence of YHWH,
on behalf of the Children of Israel,
that they may serve the serving-tasks of YHWH. [Everett Fox]
King James suggests that he “offer” them; NRSVue that he “present” them; and NJPS that he “designate” them. OJPS has him “offer” them “for a wave-offering.” The verb הֵנִיף henif and the noun תְּנוּפָה t’nufa both derive from the root נוף n‑w‑f, the three letters that you see in front of you in the noun. Both v. 13 and v. 15 repeat that the Levites must be “waved” as a “wave-offering” (וְהֵנַפְתָּ֥ אֹתָ֛ם תְּנוּפָ֖ה v’henafta otam t’nufa). Then, in v. 21, it actually happens:
Num 8:21 The Levites decontaminated-themselves and scrubbed their garments;
Aharon elevated them as an elevation-offering before the presence of YHWH,
and Aharon effected-purgation for them, to purify them. [Fox]
This verb occurs 34 times in the Bible (per Accordance; the Dictionary of Classical Hebrew makes it 35), four of which are these from Numbers 8 — quite a large chunk of them, in percentage terms. What does this verb really mean? Here are some examples:
to brandish a weapon or wield a tool:
Exod 20:22 And if you make for Me an altar of stones, do not build it of hewn stones; for by wielding your tool [הֵנַ֥פְתָּ henáfta] upon them you have profaned them.
to wave one’s hand, as when Naaman, the Aramean army commander, came to Elisha to be healed of leprosy:
2 Kgs 5:11 But Naaman was angered and walked away. “I thought,” he said, “he would surely come out to me, and would stand and invoke the LORD his God by name, and would wave his hand [וְהֵנִ֥יף v’henif] toward the spot, and cure the affected part.
but mostly, to wave before the Lord as an offering:
Lev 8:25 He took the fat — the broad tail, all the fat about the entrails, the protuberance of the liver, and the two kidneys and their fat — and the right thigh. 26 From the basket of unleavened bread that was before the LORD, he took one cake of unleavened bread, one cake of oil bread, and one wafer, and placed them on the fat parts and on the right thigh. 27 He placed all these on the palms of Aaron and on the palms of his sons, and elevated them [וַיָּ֧נֶף va-yánef, OJPS: “waved them”] as an elevation offering before the LORD.
Everett Fox, famous for the Bible translations in which he tries to apply the Buber-Rosenzweig translation method to English, adds this note to his translation of t’nufa in v. 11 as “elevation-offering”:
Traditionally “wave-offering,” which, as Milgrom shows, is probably incorrect.
Jacob Milgrom, in his JPS Torah Commentary to Num 8:11, writes:
This ritual must be presumed to have been executed only in symbolic form.
In a 1,000-word excursus on “The ‘Tenufah’ Offering,” Milgrom explains:
The nature of the ritual is nowhere defined. The rabbinic rendering “wave offering” (Mish. Men. 5:6) has been accepted by nearly all translations, dictionaries, and commentaries. The Septuagint exhibits total bewilderment. It renders tenufah in the purification ceremonial for the healed leper (Lev. 14) by three words. The Targums, on the other hand, consistently translate tenufah and its verbal forms by the root r‑w‑m, “raise, elevate.” This rendering is corroborated by most occurrences of henif in the Bible (Isa. 10:15; 11:15; 13:2; 19:16), where the rendering “elevate” is clearly superior to “wave.” Also, it stands to reason that since the tenufah ritual is frequently carried out with many objects simultaneously (Exod. 29:22–24; Lev. 8:25–27), a “waving” motion would topple the entire offering, whereas their “elevation” is physically manageable.
Remember that Leviticus 8, although it’s a whole book’s worth of chapters ago from what we’re reading this week, is (somehow) happening as part of the same inaugural ceremony as our chapter, Numbers 8.
Baruch Levine, in his Anchor Bible commentary, says this:
The offering was not “waved,” as many have explained it, but was rather carried to and fro, while being held high, in order to display the offering before the Deity … Usage here is more figurative than literal. Referring to the Levites as a tenupah merely meant that they were being presented to God as an offering.
I have to ask: If the Levites were not really being “waved” or even “elevated” what is the point of using this verb l’hanif? It’s not as if one would obviously understand that it didn’t mean to wave or to elevate them. In the context of the story — as it’s being told — God tells Moses to use this particular verb: l’hanif the Levites. It should be should be something that you can do to the Levites with your hand.
It’s not as if we should expect Moses to be able to understand what this actually meant. All this is happening for the first time. They have not been offering these t’nufa offerings over and over again for many years. Yet somehow we are supposed to understand that the Levites were treated like an offering that is “waved” or, if you insist, “elevated” before YHWH.
Fox says the Levites are not meant literally as a sacrificial offering, but I beg to differ:
Num 8:13 You shall place the Levites in attendance upon Aaron and his sons, and designate them as an elevation offering to the LORD. 14 Thus you shall set the Levites apart from the Israelites, and the Levites shall be Mine. 15 Thereafter the Levites shall be qualified for the service of the Tent of Meeting, once you have cleansed them and designated them as an elevation offering. 16 For they are formally assigned to Me from among the Israelites: I have taken them for Myself in place of all the first issue of the womb, of all the first-born of the Israelites. 17 For every first-born among the Israelites, man as well as beast, is Mine; I consecrated them to Myself at the time that I smote every first-born in the land of Egypt. 18 Now I take the Levites instead of every first-born of the Israelites; 19 and from among the Israelites I formally assign the Levites to Aaron and his sons, to perform the service for the Israelites in the Tent of Meeting and to make expiation for the Israelites, so that no plague may afflict the Israelites for coming too near the sanctuary. [NJPS]
Num 3:39 records that there were 22,000 Levites, and v. 43 records 22,273 first-born males (both numbers counting “from the age of one month up”). The extra 273 had to be redeemed at a price of 5 shekels per head, giving us the five coins by which a first-born son is redeemed today in the pidyon ha-ben ceremony.
The very least that has to happen is that the Levites, the replacement of the Israelite first-borns who were rescued from the fate suffered by the Egyptian ones, must be waved before the Lord as if they were part of a sacrificial offering. A note in the Artscroll Talmud (n. 7 on Sanhedrin 110a) explains that Aaron did exactly this:
God had instructed Moses to shave the entire body of each eligible Levi, after which Aaron physically lifted and waved them, one by one.
22,000 freshly-shaved Levites lined up and walked past him so that each one could be individually picked up and waved in all six directions — front, back, right, left, up, and down. Hope you took your vitamins, Aaron!
By next week, things will have taken a wrong turn. I’ll see you then nevertheless, for Parashat Shelach Lecha.
